Eating from the Palm of their Hand

 

Today millions are recovering from hangovers, slouching against watercoolers and talking to their friends about something Super Bowl related: that throw, that catch, that touchdown or that hit. Other millions will spend their mornings burping up bean dip and recalling Beyoncé’s half time performance, Alicia Keys’ rendition of the national anthem or Phil Simms’ poor choice of tie.

But there are others still, members of a group which may be the largest of all the survivors of the Super Bowl aftermath. These people, perhaps the largest group of all people watching the game, will talk about commercials. Ads, the funny, the dramatic and the empowering, will probably be the largest topic of conversation in the week after the biggest game of America’s biggest sport. They will be marveled over; they will be praised and criticized like submissions to a film festival. Matt Lauer and whoever the woman on the Today show is will spend more time recapping what happened during breaks in play than they will talking about what happened on the field.

Even before the game more people talk about the ads than the sport itself. “Leaked Super Bowl commercials” – also known as regular commercials that companies put on YouTube the week before the Super Bowl – have hundreds of thousands of views online. Commentators predict winners and losers of the commercials instead of the big game.

Suddenly ad lingo pervades mainstream conversation. We talk about “spots” and worry about price per seconds of air time. Celebrities hawking their endorsements on radio row don’t only mention that they have a “great new” commercial airing, they give the slot number, the quarter and the half it will hit our television screens. Because we are all suddenly so interested in that.

Somewhere in the depths of a swanky Manhattan bar, Don Draper, sitting with the rest of his Madison Avenue crew, sips down an Old-Fashioned and smiles.

Commercials spend ninety nine percent of the year being reviled. People switch channels, leave for the bathroom or stare at drying paint in order to avoid watching commercials. We barely even say that word, instead we spit it and let it smack against the pavement. We don’t tolerate it, the patronizing lies, the attempts to sell us crap we don’t need. That’s what commercials are, we assure ourselves. And we hate them.

But, during the desolate weeks of January and April, we flock to the ads like sycophants to a false messiah. People go to parties, eat salty food and put up with people whose company they don’t particularly enjoy not to watch the game, but to watch the commercials. Then, in the days afterwards, we talk about them. We rehash them and compare them. Bloggers, hungry for page-views and attention, do “commercial round-ups” and embed clips of them on their website. Talk about free advertising.

The Mad Man sets his whiskey drink down, slicks back his hair and raises a fist in triumph.

For just about two weeks, we are his. And, during the game itself, we sit in the comfortable palm of his hand, not daring to run to the bathroom or grab another plate of ribs for fear of missing a new commercial.

Maybe it feels good, to be wanted, even if the thing that wants us is a massive, multi-national conglomerate who likes us only for our money. Maybe we just like the attention.

It’s baffling that an ad, a normally soulless, corporatized attempt to extort a capitalistic wage-slave of his salary, suddenly becomes an art when it airs during a February football game. A thirty second video clip, which has the naked intention of exploiting shallow emotions like nostalgia and lust or laughter in an attempt to sell a person a new version of TurboTax, can become the topic of conversation for years, enshrined permanently as a cultural artifact. Hour-long, Oscar-nominated motion pictures don’t and won’t ever get that kind of attention or respect from the masses.

We are a society so fundamentally defined by materialism that we glorify the glorification of materials – petty, pandering, inflated and artificial as it is – as much as we glorify the materials themselves. Commercialism has come to take on a new meaning, and Madison Avenue has become the center of the known universe.